


not even into another eternity (will you stop your lovely orbiting)

by Lilsciencequeen



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: Academy Era Leo Fitz and Jemma Simmons, Alternate Universe - Different Framework Universe (Marvel), Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, F/M, Fluff, Fluff and Angst, Lighthouses, Multi-verse, Multiple Universes, Mystery, season 6 spec
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-03-07
Updated: 2019-07-21
Packaged: 2019-11-13 03:13:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 11,992
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18023690
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lilsciencequeen/pseuds/Lilsciencequeen
Summary: When Fitz goes missing, whisked away to another universe, Jemma knows what she has to do, what needs to be done to found him, but when finding him takes her to places long forgotten and never imagined, she suddenly finds her quest to find him is much harder than anticipated. Will she find her Fitz and bring him home, or will they both get trapped in a dimension not theirs?// A season 6 spec for the amazing Ashley.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Monkeybum1723](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Monkeybum1723/gifts).



> Surprise! I'm finally posting this. I have been working on this since the S6 trailer dropped and to have chapter one done is such a relieve, as well as a third of chapter 2 and half of 4... Since these ones are longer, I am not sure updates will be super regular, but I am aiming to get this done before S6 airs.
> 
> A massive shout-out to Ashley for helping me write this and give me ideas, and Stjarna for persuading me to post it today and not this weekend.

_You be the moon I'll be the earth_

_And when we burst_

_Start over oh darling_

_Begin again_

“You know that this is dangerous?” Enoch told her for what must have been the hundredth time. It was starting to get annoying at this point because she knew that he was trying to talk her out of this, that he was trying to tell her that this way, it wasn’t going to be successful and that there were better ways to be doing this. But those ways, they would take so long. Too long. And she wasn’t prepared to wait any longer. She had been without him for so long now that any moment more that she had to wait was a moment too much.

“I do,” Jemma replied, not even looking at him, her attention focused on the screen in front of her, a dozen calculations written across the screen, her brain racing as it processed them. They all seemed accurate, the simulation seemingly perfect. She had run it a dozen times, and each time the results had been the same. It was now or never. She had to do this. “And I’m doing it.” Looking over her shoulder, she could see Enoch flinch, as if he feared what she was going to do. “You can’t… you can’t stop me. I’m getting him back.” There was a franticness to her tone, a desperation that she couldn’t hide, no matter how hard that she tried. “I’m getting him back.”

“I just want to warn you of the dangers,” Enoch began, his tone cautious. He was obviously torn between wanting to scare her enough to put her off doing this and wanting this all to be over, wanting Fitz to be found. He took a step closer to her, his tone, his expression, just as neutral as it always was. “Staying in there, in any universe other than our own for too long can kill you. Will kill you. Erase you from this universe and trapping you there, so no matter how tempting it is to stay in whatever universe you find yourself in, you can’t stay there.”

“I know that.” Because of course she did. The other universes, the multiverses, the same principle applied to them as applied to the Framework. Dying in there, living in there, it would kill her here in this universe. If she stayed too long, then she would become part of that universe so no matter what she had to survive, she had to do this. And if she didn’t… well then… then she would lose Fitz. “But I’m not going to get lose in there. Out there, whatever. This isn’t my first time breaking into other realities.”

“It’s just a warning Agent Simmons. Lose yourself in there, and you lose Fitz too.”

A chill ran down her spine at these words out loud. It was so much different hearing them out loud, so much different than just thinking them. It showed just how much this meant, how much was at stake. A moment passed, then another, and it felt as though it was too late now to speak, to reply to what he had just said, and the longer she waited, the more the silence drew out, the worse that it became. Thankfully though, she was saved by Daisy entering the room. A tablet was in her hands, and she was flicking through the last few things they needed to run through before they did this.

Setting the tablet down on the table closet to Jemma, she rested her hand on Jemma’s shoulder. “Are you ready?”

“It’s now or never,” Jemma told her best friend, the woman who had fought by her side for months now, who had held her all those nights when she had cried, when it felt as though there were no point continuing, Fitz long gone and lost to the cosmos. Daisy had been the one when Jemma had found the cryo-chamber empty, devoid of Fitz. Daisy had been the one who had held her as she lay on the ground, sobbing and screaming, her heart ripped into a hundred million pieces. Daisy who had been the one who had carried her to bed when sleep had finally claimed her, hours, nearly a day later. Daisy who had been the one who had sat by her side when she wanted nothing more than to lie in bed all day, wanting the blankets to swallow her whole and take the pain away.

And it was also Daisy who had confronted Enoch with her, had demanded to where Fitz was, who had taken him and how to get him back. Daisy who helped her to get the cyro-chamber back to Earth, rigging it with the remaining code left over from the Framework to allow for travel between dimensions.

“Then let’s do it.” Daisy made the first move, walking towards the cryo-chamber, and lifted the lid. It had been nearly a week now since they had found it, the thing now connected to dozens of S.H.I.E.L.D severs with twice as many cables.

Jemma joined her once again, the two of them standing side by side. Staring at the empty chamber, the thing looking so cold and uninviting, soon to be occupied by her, she couldn’t help the twist that occurred in her stomach. What was about to happen, despite knowing that it was the right thing, scared her. Terrified her more than anything else she had done over the past several years, but it was the right thing to do.

“We’ll be tracking everything that we can,” Daisy reassured, squeezing Jemma’s hand in her own. “All your vitals, anything that your brain produces and if anything goes…”

“Not without Fitz,” she whispered. “Not without him.”

When Daisy didn’t answer, it didn’t surprise her. It was obvious that she wouldn’t want to be pulled out without him, but if the team did that… well only time would tell about that. “If, and only if, it comes to that, we’ll deal with it at the time, okay?”

A nod and another step forward. “I’m doing this.” The words, nothing more than a whisper, were not meant to be heard by anyone, they were supposed to be a reassurance to herself, words to confirm to her that this would all be okay.

That she would find Fitz.

And with some help, Daisy helped her climb into the cryo-chamber, closing the lid as soon as she was lying there, the metal cold against her back. All of a sudden, she felt claustrophobic, trapped in this small space. Ever since the Pod, she had struggled with them, she knew Fitz did too, and for him to be in here, knowing what it would have been like, her heart torn itself into two once more.  And above her was the single bloody handprint that she hadn’t yet cleaned away. It was Fitz’s. It had to be, and she hadn’t wanted to lose that connection to him. Not yet anyway. So it continued to loom over her, a constant reminder that she had failed him.

“Thirty seconds!” Daisy called, her voice distant, muted by the metal now encasing her. This was it, this was happening.

She was going to find him.

She was going to find Fitz and as she closed her eyes, a single tear ran down her face, and then she was transported away, whisked away to another dimension to find him.

***

It was disorientating, being transported into another universe, the feeling not dissimilar to how it had been when she had been in the Framework, but this time, she wasn’t waking up, suffocating on the damp dirt. She was in a room, a bright white, and there were bodies all around her, not rotting corpses this time, but living, breathing people. She was sitting up, bodies pressed close against her, and something wooden pressing against her knees. So very unlike the grave she had once woken up in. But this place… she had no idea what it was. She had no idea where she was. But the room, there was something familiar about it, but she couldn’t place it. The bodies, they weren’t just pressed beside here. They were in front of her, behind her, all around her. And something must have happened, they must be waiting for something as a hushed whisper ran around the room, a few heads turning to look at her, and as more time passed, the voices continued to rise.

“Cadet Simmons.” A voice called through the noise and the confusion, so much noise and confusion it took her only a handful more seconds to realise where she was. She was back at the Academy. Sitting in a lecture. She hadn’t really thought about them over a decade now but here she was, back here once again. Back where her story with Fitz started. “Are you with us?”

It was Anne Weaver asking her the question, the woman who had mentored her for years, who had influenced so many of her decisions. Someone she hadn’t seen in years, not since the Monolith took her, something that was a lifetime ago now. “Cadet Simmons!”

Her name was snapped, an anger she had rarely seen in Weaver, especially directed at her, and more heads turned to face her, the whispers growing louder. The anger, even after, all these years made her uneasy, made her feel like she was nothing more than a child being told off for lying to their parents.

“I’m sorry,” she eventually managed to stutter out, her words uneasy. “I’m not feeling so good.”

And before anyone could say anything else, she grabbed her bag and fled the lecture theatre, heading to the bathroom. Thankfully, after pushing the door open with her shoulder, she found it was empty. Turning on a tap, she splashed water on her face, in an attempt to compose herself, take in her surroundings.

She had to figure out where she was.

Well, she knew where she was. She was at the Academy, that much was obvious, but everything else, that she didn’t know. Not yet anyway.

Taking a breath focused on her reflection in the mirror, not as clean as it could with fingerprints smudged over it and took in what she looked like. She looked younger, her face baby-ish, looking no older than seventeen if she had to guess. Her hair was longer, pulled back into a ponytail, and her eyes… they had the biggest difference, they were what stood out the most.

They were hopeful, bright and dancing with life. She hadn’t seen that spark in years now, not even really knowing she had lost it until now, until she was noticing what she was missing. Just how much had she changed since this moment, this point in her life when she was young, still in the Academy, still studying.

Just how much had she lost.

Chewing on her lip, she washed at her face once more, before re-doing her hair. So many thoughts flickered around her mind and it wasn’t until the bell rang, she was brought back to reality. It was a sound that she hadn’t heard in so long now, and she knew she had to move. So, throwing her satchel over her shoulder she headed back out into the corridor, following the flow of people. It took her to the cafeteria, swarms of students, so many of them much older and much taller than her pushing past, wanting to get to the lunch line first for the better selection of food.

But food was the last thing on her mind; instead she let her feet carry her to a table, one of the smaller ones in the furthest corner of the room, half shrouded in darkness as the light above it flickered on and off. Sitting down, she retrieved the first notebook from her bag, opening it to the first page, and a soft smile crossed her face.

It was their first plans for the Night-Night Gun. The formula for the dendrotoxin. All of it, here. She had almost forgotten about it, it had been so long ago now. And without really realising it, she got lost in all her old work, plans that had never come to see the light of day, and plans that had been developed into technology they were still using today. She even began making notes in it, lost in a part of herself she had forgotten existed.

“Are you okay?” A voice asked her, someone sliding into the seat opposite her. It was Fitz. She hadn’t even realised he had been coming over, she had been so distracted and now here he was here, sitting in front of her, a soft smile on his face, something that was just as soft. He was so young looking, his face smooth, not a hint of stubble anywhere, and there was something in his eyes, such happiness that he had been lacking in the weeks, days, before he had died. There had been glimmers, such as when they had gotten married. “You skipped class earlier and I didn’t see you after it. I just wanted to make sure that you were okay.”

Something fluttered inside her something she didn’t really understand, because though this was Fitz, her Fitz, it also wasn’t. Yes, he may have been trapped in her, in this body, but his mind, it wasn’t her Fitz. It had taken them so long to get the science right to track Fitz, using objects that belonged to him, objects that had sentimental meaning to him, to connect to him. It had seemed hard at the time, and had involved many sleepless nights, but now…. Now it seemed easy. The hard part was what came next.

The hard part was rescuing him and bringing him back to the right dimension.

“Of course,” she whispered, smiling at him. “Thank you. I’m alright.”

“Good, that’s good. I was just wondering if you still wanted to catch that film tonight?” He seemed unsure about it, and Jemma wasn’t sure if he was asking her out or not. In their universe, her and Fitz, they often went to the cinema together, it was nothing new. But this here universe, it was new. So new, so unusual that he didn’t exactly know what the right response was. But she knew one thing. She had to stick with him.

“Yes, I’d love that Fitz.”

***

Days passed, and she had no idea how she was going to get him out of this universe, back to their own one. She had no idea this really worked, just that she needed to break him out. Enoch had told her that she needed to get him to believe that this wasn’t their world, that he needed to believe to get him back home. But she had no idea how she was going to do that. Fitz, this Fitz, he didn’t seem like he knew any different, he didn’t even flinch when she subtly dropped in a mention of marriage (not theirs specifically, she said it was her aunts’ that they had been celebrating their second anniversary and she was wondering if she would ever get anything like that, and Fitz just said that one day she would) so she had no idea how she was going to convince him that this life was a fake. Nothing more than a lie.

And this life here, it seemed so different to the one they had, they seemed… so innocent, not yet caught up in S.H.I.E.L.D. and Hydra, time travel and inter-dimensional travel, alternative realities and distance planets, and a part of her wished that things had stayed this way. That they had stayed innocent. That they had never went into the field, instead staying safe in some indoor, non-mobile lab.

But she knew that it was wrong. She wasn’t going to be sucked into the mindset that this universe was better, not with so many stern warnings from Enoch. So she continued working through it, thinking of a plan. She was in the library one day, working through the pages of notes she had when the fire alarm went of suddenly, a blaring unending klaxon piercing through the calmness of the library. Rising to her feet from her study both to see what was going on, she discovered others were doing the same, no one expecting this, and everyone being a bit confused.

“Is it the chemistry labs again?” someone called out, adding to the ever-growing sea of noise flooding the library. “Cause if it is…”

“It’s not chemistry,” a voice announced after the while, Ms Pince, the library supervisor for that floor. “A gas pipe has burst.” Before she could say anymore, everyone started running, pushing and shoving towards the door, ignoring everything they knew about evacuation procedures. Jemma was amongst them, but once she got out into the main corridor, she headed the other way, pushing _against_ the never-ending stream of people that seemed to be heading her way, fighting against them in the never-ending rush because she had to find him. She couldn’t lose him, couldn’t leave him behind.

It took her ages to move anywhere, every step she took forward being met with another burst of people pushing her further back, but soon, she began to make some headway. She began to move towards the engineering rooms where she knew that Fitz would be. And she called out to him, in the hopes that she could find him, before the worst happened.

“Jemma!” she heard called out, his tone panicked, terrified that he was unable to find her. “Jemma!”

“Fitz!” she called out once more, a desperate attempt to find him because she couldn’t lose him. “Fitz what…” He had caught up with her at this point, their bodies slamming together, a comforting rock in the sea of panic and fear.

“Jemma,” his voice was low, just loud enough to hear over the shouts and the screams around them. “Jemma, we need to get out of here.”

“What… the gas?” She still had no idea what was going on, what was happening. Just that there was a gas leak, something that _hadn’t_ happened anytime during their time at the Academy, and this only confirmed to her that this was nothing like the world she knew, and that in her quest to find Fitz, she would find the familiar so very unfamiliar. “Fitz, what’s happening?”

He grabbed her wrist and started pulling her with the flow of the crowd, past the window where the midday sun was shining in, showing that it was an otherwise gorgeous day. “We have to leave now.” The way he was speaking, it made it seem as if there were more that he needed to say.

“Fitz, what’s happening?”

“Not here. Not now.” He didn’t look back at her as he spoke but there was an urgency coming from him. An urgency that made her hurry up her pace. “We gotta get outta here.”

No objections came from her, and stumbling over her feet, she let him guide her out, but the crowd soon stopped, and they found they were moving nowhere. Another wave of panic rippled through the crowd, shouts and screams demanding to know what was happening, why no one was moving.

Why no one could leave.

Then it came.

The deafening boom.

The last thing she could remember was slamming into the glass, the things cracking and shattering against her weight, and then falling, falling into the nothingness.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> TW for Death

Her ears were still ringing from the explosion when she finally woke up. If she were being honest, she was surprised that she had survived it at all. Maybe she had been far away enough from the blast that it hadn’t killed her immediately.

And the fall hadn’t killed her either, something which was surprising. She had thought the fall would have killed her, her body smashing on the concrete being the thing that would have ended her life, but it didn’t. Somehow, she had survived, judging by the fact that she was lying on a bed, the mattress firm but somewhat soft. It was nice.

So nice in fact that she didn’t want to wake up, no, she just wanted to lie there in the bed with her eyes closed, allowing the mattress to hold and support her. To allow her body to rest, still throbbing slightly from the pain of being thrown through the window, and as she lay there, her mind wandered. She wondered if Fitz was here, if he had survived. She wondered what he would say, what he would tell her. She wondered if she would tell him here and now what had happened, who she was, and what was really going on. She wondered if he would listen, accept what had happened, and work with her, like they always did. And she wondered if together, they would work out how to get home, away from here and back to where they came from.

She wondered and she wondered and she wondered.

And she also wondered when someone would come to check on her, tell her what was happening.

But no one came. No one even came to check on her. She tried calling out but there was no sound. She couldn’t hear a thing, and her heart started beating faster in her chest. Something was wrong.

Really wrong.

Rolling over, fighting the fire in her veins and the ache in her bones she opened her eyes, and took in the room.

This wasn’t the medical wing in the Academy.

It was so far from it.

The walls were made from uncovered rock, a light cream and bumpy. There was no window, just a lamp flickering in the corner, not getting rid of the shadows but simply throwing them to the corners of the room.

Though she didn’t know it well, it took her only seconds to realise where she was.

Her room.

Well, the room that had been her bedroom when she had been a slave to the Kree.

Panic overwhelmed her, a thick substance covering her throat. She couldn’t be back here. She just couldn’t.

Sitting up in the bed, battling the sheets, she allowed herself to take a few calming breaths, knowing that that was better. Knowing if she focused on this with a clear head, then maybe, just maybe she could work out what had happened.

Why she was back here instead of where she had been, instead of where Fitz was unless…

Unless Fitz was no longer in that Universe, instead, thrown here. It would make sense if the science was right. Her conscience, her very soul was now interwoven with his, connected in such a way that no matter where he went, she would go. Bonded to him for all of eternity.

But how had they got here… how had they got to this universe... Enoch had told her that Fitz was trapped between Universe’s, flitting between them. And with her soul connected to them, she was obviously following him. But how he was flitting, travelling between universes, that was the question that needed answering.

And it was one she couldn’t answer, at least not yet anyway. She couldn’t even think about it because there was now someone standing in her doorway, already in their slave robes, that pale baby blue that now made her ill. Jemma stared at her, narrowing her eyes at the other woman. She knew that she shouldn’t be angry at this woman, who had done nothing wrong at the end of the day, but she couldn’t help the anger that was bubbling away inside her, being reduced to this once again.

She entered the room, taking steps and crossing the distance between them. No words were exchanged. There would be no words exchanged, and not just because they couldn’t hear. No, no words would be exchanged because they were forbidden from talking to each, not allowed to communicate in-case they decided to rise up and overthrow their Kree oppressors.

Instead, she was in here to get Jemma ready, prepare her for the day of serving, a silent job of servitude that she hated. And knowing there was no point in fighting it, so pushing back the blankets, Jemma rose, and reached for the robe, sliding into them as the other servant got the gold paint ready.

***

“Jemma.”

The voice was cold in her brain. Though it had been many many months since she had last heard it, so many months she had all but forgotten it now, the two whispered syllables still sent a chill down her spine and turned her blood to ice. They made her so uncomfortable and there was nothing that she could do. She couldn’t even squirm, instead, she had to remain passive and stationary, only responding when called because doing otherwise could have deadly consequences.

So she looked at him, her gaze passive and her expression blank. It was the only way to be, unless she wanted to risk death. “You weren’t at meals yesterday evening. Why?”

Swallowing, she realised she had no answer to this. She had no idea as to why that Jemma hadn’t been at evening meals the night before. Where she had been, and what she had been doing. There was no way that whatever answer she gave would please him. There was no way that she was getting out of here alive. She had failed, and not just herself.

She had failed Fitz.

He was going to remain trapped now, doomed to drift between universes until his very soul gave up and faded from existence altogether.

“Jemma.” There was impatience in his tone and she knew that not answering would be just as deadly as answering. “Where were you last night.”

“I was severing in the other room. For your guests.” The answer was quick and blunt, the best thing she could think of. She just hoped it was good enough to please him.

“Hmmm.” There was no way from that one word (not that it was even a word) to gage how he was feeling, what he was thinking. Whether he believed her or not. He continued to remain silent as he reached up, allowing his hand to brush down the side of her cheek. Despite flinching slightly, she remained nonreactive otherwise and Kasius seemed most pleased with this. “And excellent service you did provide. They spoke highly of you.” His lips curved up into a cold and calculating smile. “Keep that up and you can continue to progress up the ranks as you are.”

“Thank you.” The words were whispered, and she knew that she had to speak them. Kasius liked to think of himself as a God, as Earth’s saviour, the one who rescued them in their darkest hour. Helping to fulfil his ego and making him seem worth more than he actually was, that was the way to stay alive in this society, the way to stay alive when under his control. Because that was what she was; under his control. And she had to be sensible so as not to risk upsetting him, and saying thank you, two simple words, that’s what was needed.

He laughed, a noise void of any joy and dropped his hand, spinning away from her and turning his attention to the plant in the centre of the room, reaching up turning a leaf over in his hand, examining it, and reaching into his robes and pulling out a pair of scissors. Cutting away at the leaf, most likely, he held it up to the light and whispered a series of words, just loud enough for her to hear. “I knew there was a reason that you were my favourite.” Before turning back and smiling at her.

It took all her willpower not to throw up at that.

***

By the time she got back to her room that night, the guard locking the door behind her so as she couldn’t wander about, conspire with others or make plans, or simply be seen, she was exhausted. She was ready to go to bed, to sleep and let the darkness take over her and forget about everything.

But she couldn’t. With being rushed of her feet all day, helping one guest or another, she had no time to think of a plan, how to escape and how to find Fitz, even if he was here (not that she wanted to consider that thought because he had to be here. He had to be. Why else would she be here?).

Searching through the room, something that was a mirror image of the one she had stayed in the last time, familiar and unfamiliar at the same time, she found something that wasn’t there the last time. A small wooden box, not much larger than a shoe box, had been hiding in the back of a closet, an old rag thrown on top of it, as though to hide it, and opening it up, she found something in there she never expected.

A ring, sliding about the bottom of the box, a few imperfections on it as though it had been taken in and out of the box multiple times, as though Jemma were scared, she would forget it if she didn’t keep checking on it.

Sliding it on her finger, she found it fit perfectly. It was the same as her one, the one that she no longer wore on her finger but around her neck on a chain, with Fitz’s ring, the two of them resting on her heart, a reminder of what she had.

And what she loved.

Shaking her mind clear of that, she turned her attention to the other objects in the box. There were three other things, small and thin, pieces of paper.

Photographs.

Holding her breath, she reached in and took them out and saw that her and Fitz were in two of them, and with them was…

Was their daughter.

In the first one, she was nothing more than a bundle of blankets, in Jemma’s arms, Fitz holding her. She herself looked exhausted, but her smile, her eyes… the happiness in it was something that she had never seen in herself before. It was the excitement of being a new mother, the excitement about what is to come.

Taking her attention away from that photo (something that was much harder than she expected), was the next photo. Their daughter was several years older, hanging of Fitz’s shoulder, clearly not interested in taking the picture. Brown curls hang around her face, wild and unruly, not dissimilar to how Fitz’s were back when they were in the Academy. She gave what she thought was a soft laugh, running her hand down them, so absorbed in this Jemma’s family, wondering what her life was like.

And in the third photo, she was sitting with an orange, something Deke had once told her was used to celebrate birthdays in the FitzSimmons/Shaw families when they lived in the Lighthouse in the other timeline. There was a candle in it, and the picture was taken mid-blow, as she was a wish, and Jemma couldn’t help but wonder what she was wishing for.

A family?

Happiness?

Or something every kid wished for; a pony?

Looking at them, it made her heart hurt. Looking at all this, even though she knew that it wasn’t her life, she hated it. Hated that one version of herself had been torn away from her family, alone in this hell.

So lost and so alone.

And her family…

Had she given herself up to save them?

Or has she been taken from them?

And why did she still have the images? Did the Kree let her keep them, a cruel reminder of what she had lost.

Or did she keep them herself, a reminder of what she had lost but what she was still fighting for? Both seemed so possible, but she wanted the second to be true, because it was what she would do, no matter how much it hurt. She would want a reminder of not only what she had just lost, but what she was fighting for too.

And setting them gently back in the box beside the ring, she closed it and put it back, because it filled her with a renewed sense of hope because he was here, her Fitz, and she was going to get him back.

No matter what.

***

It was the next night when she had managed her escape, and it had not been dissimilar to her last escape from servitude. She had taken a knife (yes, another butter knife but it proved no less effective than the last one), and whilst the Kree she had been serving had been eating, she had caused a scene, slicing him with the knife. He was injured, not severely that his injuries would kill him but enough that he was incapacitated. Grabbing the keys from the table beside him, she ran from the room, only taking time to ensure the top was locked behind her and hurried down the corridor, moving faster then she should but not faster enough to cause a scene.

Reaching the lifts, she hit the button for level 084, the floor where she and Fitz had been and whilst waiting for the lift to reach that level, she bounced on the balls of her feet, unable to settle. She knew that she wouldn’t have long to find him, that the Kree, would be on her soon, wanting to take their revenge for what she had done.

She was thankful though, that Kasius had turned her hearing back on, allowing her to help the Kree, the warriors back from doing something horrific somewhere in the galaxy. It meant that she would be able to talk to Fitz, to get through to him and bring him home.

Finally, the lift stopped, a ping echoing too loudly around the elevator and the doors opened, bringing her back to the Lighthouse, something that she knew but also didn’t. Stepping out, the doors slid shut behind her, and she gave it one last glance before turning to the left, in an attempt to find Fitz.

It didn’t take her long to find him, in fact, she all but ran into him, a smile breaking across her face. “Fitz…” She could hardly breathe, the word escaping her as nothing more than a whisper. “It’s you… you’re here.”

She took a step forward, and tried to reach for him but he flinched, and didn’t even try and hide it.

“Fitz?” she tried again, not stepping forward again, not wanting to scare him this time. “It’s me. I’m back… I’m here to rescue you.”

“No,” he whispered, staring at her and squeezing his eyes shut, as if the very site of her was horrifying, shocking him to his very core. “No. It can’t be… No.”

“Fitz,” she tried, not wanting to beg but knowing that she most likely would. “Fitz, please listen to me…”

“You’re not her. You can’t be… you’re not real. You’re something… something they sent.”

“Fitz…

“Get away from me!” His tone was broken, fierce, and it tore at her heart because she knew that tone, how he was speaking because not so long ago, as just how she had screamed those very words herself to May, begging the older woman to get away from her, to leave her alone and to let her mourn.

Mourn…

This is what this Fitz was doing.

Mourning.

Grieving because he had lost his Jemma, his best friend.

The Kree hadn’t just taken her, they had killed her and had brought her back for their own use.

She wanted to take a step closer, to help. To make everything better but she couldn’t. The look on his face, it pained her, a deep sorrowful tear in her heart. “It’s me Fitz.”

“It’s not… It can’t be.”

“Fitz?” The voice, so familiar but so distant caused her to spin. May was standing behind her, and with her was a girl, half hidden by the older woman’s legs.

“Daddy?” Her voice, it was so soft, so innocent, as though she didn’t know of the horrors that existed in the world, her father hiding her from the world. “What’s mummy doing here?”

“Peggy…” Fitz breathed, crossing the distance between them, bumping into Jemma as he did so and he took her into his arms, holding her close, trying to hide her away from this.

Hide her away from Jemma.

Peggy. Could that be her daughter, their daughter? A daughter born and raised in this hell, one that had thought she had lost her mother, one who thought her mother had been killed by the Kree when in fact… no…

No.

This wasn’t right. Not at all.

She had to get Fitz away from her, and back to their world.

Fitz wax currently whispering to Peggy, the two of them turned away from her, not allowing her to be part of this conversation, this tender moment. Because she wasn’t family. She wasn’t part of their team, their unit. What they had become ever since Jemma’s death.

“Okay?” This part of the conversation she could hear, the rest nothing more than a whisper. It didn’t stop her watching though, and soon the young girl was back in May’s arms and was being taken from the room, Fitz’s attention on her once more.

Before she could speak though, he took her by the wrist, and she followed him, going into a side room. “Tell me the truth. Who are you and what are you doing here?”

A sigh escaped her. “I am… I’m Jemma. I’m still Jemma. Just not yours. You know the multiverse theory? It’s real and I’m from a different universe. Fitz, my Fitz, he’s trapped within you and I know that sounds ridiculous, but I just need you to understand that it’s me. That I’m Jemma and I just… I miss you.” Tears were coming down her face now, thick and fast and dragging gold paint with them and she didn’t even try and stop them.

Fitz, meanwhile, just shook his head. “I don’t know you. Not really. You’re not… you’re not my wife.” Then he let out a long sigh, sounding exhausted. “And I don’t know why but I trust you…”

“You do?” His response shocked her, it wasn’t words that she was expecting hear, and the words that followed, they continued to shock her.

“And I want to help you.”

“You do?”

He nodded, reaching up and rubbing at the back of his neck. “Something about your words, they make sense to me… and I…” he stopped. The sound of shouting was coming from somewhere, and somewhere close by.

Fitz’s attention was no longer on her, he was looking over her shoulder, and pushing past her, he stuck his head around the door.

“Is it the Kree?” she asked, almost scared to know the answer. Turning back to face her, he nodded.

“You can’t be here,” he told her, coming over to her and trying to bundle her somewhere, anywhere but there was no where to go, with the room being nothing more than a small closest, a full of rubbish to be discarded somehow and somewhere. And it was too late to flee through the door as the Kree had seen her. Seen them.

“Get her!” One of the guards shouted, and then three of them started hurrying over to them, and before Jemma could do anything, before she could push him out of the way, he was stabbed, straight through chest. It killed him instantly, his legs falling out from under him.

Her screams echoed around them.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Firstly, I am going to apologise for taking so long to post this, I was finishing my undergrad dissertation and had no time to devote to this, but it has finally been submitted meaning I have more fic time now. Secondly, I haven't seen any 6.01 spoilers, and would rather avoid them, so please don't comment any ??? 
> 
> Thank you for waiting, and I hope you enjoyed this chapter.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Guess what? I'm back and ready to inflict more pain with this fic! Thank you all for bearing with me over these last few turbulent months but hopefully everything is back on track in this fic. I hope you enjoy this chapter as much as I enjoyed writing it and thank you for all your support, it means a lot to me.

She was taken back to Kasius after watching Fitz be stabbed, dragged back down to the lower levels and she didn’t even put up a fight. She just let herself be taken. She had no energy left to fight so when she felt the strong hands around her arms, lifting her up and dragging her away from his corpse, she accepted her fate, that whatever the Kree did…well it would happen and there would be nothing that she could do to fight it.

And she wasn’t even sure that she wanted to fight it.

Fitz was gone, he was dead, and she had no idea if his soul had managed to find its way to another universe or whether he was truly dead, never to return to her, and at the moment, it seemed more likely that the later was true because she was still here. She hadn’t followed him, wherever he went.

She was trapped here and despite how hard she tried, she couldn’t be optimistic about this.

Not anymore.

Not when she wouldn’t see Fitz again.

Not when she was trapped here.

Because she didn’t even know how she was getting back to Earth.

Their Earth.

Their  _home_.

Because Fitz… he was her way back. Breaking him out of here, making him remember was her way out of here. Her way back to their reality. And unless the others realised that something was wrong and pulled her out on their end, then she wasn’t getting out of here.

She was trapped here, doomed to live the rest of her life as a slave to the Kree, and considering it, she knew that the rest of her life wasn’t very long.

“You disobeyed me Jemma.” His voice knocked her out of her thoughts of self-pity. He didn’t turn around to look at her, and from her spot on the floor she was too scared to look up at him, even though his back was facing her. Despite facing him before, and defeating him, he still scared her. Even more so than the many other horrors that she had faced. It was his tone of voice that did it, the icy chill of it that sent shivers down her spine. “You were one of the best. One of my favourites. And you do this. You run away from me, go back down to them.” He turned to face her, and the look on his face as he gazed down upon her, it was one close to disappointment. “You knew that for them to live that you had to stay here and yet you still ran.”

Taking slow careful steps, each one calculated, he closed the distance between them and once it was closed, he knelt and grabbed the front of her robes and pulled her up, her feet no longer on the ground as he rose to full height, his face only inches from her now. His breath was warm against her face and smelt of death. “I thought I could trust you Jemma. That you were a rose amongst the thorns, a beauty already so perfect, one that didn’t need cultivation and then… then you do _this._ ”

“Please,” she stammered, the word stumbling out of her again and again, each one crashing into the previous one. “I didn’t… I just…”

“Silence!” The word was barked, echoing around the room and then… a splitting pain in her skull, so painful it felt as if it would split into two and her world was plunged into silence once more. She must have screamed, she felt like she was screaming, there was nothing else she could have done. It was the worst pain that she had ever felt, like her whole brain was on fire and telling itself apart. She couldn’t stand it and even in his grasp, she felt her body tense and try and curl up but she couldn’t, her body being held at such an awkward angle that it made it impossible.

And suddenly, without even hinting towards it, Kasius threw her across the room, with more strength than she thought he would have, and as her neck hit the ground at an awkward angle, a sharp shock ricocheting through her body before it went numb, the world turning black around her and stars dancing above her.

It took her only seconds to wake up this time, and she felt herself sliding across the floor, a grunt escaping her as she slid across the floor. Looking around her, she tried to work out where Kasius was, were Sinara was in-case there was another attack, something she believed was coming. She wasn’t yet dead, something that the two Kree would soon change…

But it wasn’t the Lighthouse that she was in.

No.

She was in the stores for dangerous artefacts back at Sci-Ops.

And looming above her in a glass case, the door wide open, was the Monolith, restored to its normal state after spitting her out on the floor. And even though she had seen it before, the silent imposing form of it still terrified her, looming and imposing, a threat ready to lash out at any seconds.

Scrambling to her feet and backing away from it in-case she was taken again, swept of to Maveth again, she made her way to the door, hoping to work out what was happening.

***

It didn’t take her long to find her way out of the basements and the vaults, she had spent enough time working there with other 0-8-4s to know her way around it, and the best way to get out of there without being spotted by security or the other scientists that hung around this area. It did involve a lot of hiding behind corners and in other vaults, at least until the coast was clear and she could make her escape.

Knowing that she had been returned to Sci-Ops after being on Maveth, and that she was alive… it gave her hope, not a lot, but some hope that Fitz was still out here, trapped in another Universe. Maybe one where he had stayed here, teaching and studying, away from the dangers they had faced over the years. Because Hydra obviously hadn’t won here, the S.H.I.E.L.D. logo being displayed proudly everywhere. So they wouldn’t have been able to hurt him to kill him. So he had to be alive, somewhere. He had to be.

Because she didn’t know what she do without him. But there was still so many unknows, the Monolith being the main one. Why she had woken up on the floor beside it, her body aching.

Was this a universe where Fitz had stayed at Sci-Ops, choosing not to follow her into the field?

Maybe it was a universe where he had returned to Sci-Ops after losing her, not able to work in the field anymore, wanting to either focus all his time to find her or move on and get away from whatever it was that reminded him of her?

Or maybe neither of them had went into the field, choosing to stay in Sci-Ops, locked away in a indoor, non-mobile lab that they had believed to be safe.

There was no way of knowing what was happening unless she looked it all up, but since she was oh so obviously missing, she couldn’t just ask anyone about what had happened. She needed to do research, look up what had happened and work out where to go from there.

The Library…

That would work. There would be documents about when she went missing, ideas about what could have happened, about what life was like before she had disappeared. It would provide her with all the information she would need.

But first she had to go to the bathroom.

***

She looked worse than she felt. The skin of her face was sunken; her cheeks nothing more than hollows in her face and her eyes were rimmed with black, as if she hadn’t slept in months. Her hair hung limp and damp around her face, much longer than it should be and there was sand everywhere.

Clinging to her hair, rubbing her skin raw and hiding in the creases in her clothes. She didn’t even try to wipe it away, there was far too much of it, and with the alarms that had been blaring in the vaults, she wanted to remain hidden as long as she could, wanted to get to the library as quickly as she could before she was noticed.

She had to. If she wanted to find out as much as she could about the Jemma from this Universe, so quickly turning the tap on, she quickly washed her face, a few grains of sand draining away, along with the freshly awoken memories of hell. Because focusing on that wasn’t important. She knew that it wouldn’t do her any good to think about what she had gone through.

No, what she had to do was get out of her, get to the library and work out what had happened to her, and whether Fitz existed in this Universe. So, with more force than was probably necessary, she turned the taps off in the bathroom and grabbed some paper towels, scrunching them into a ball as she passed the bin.

Leaving the bathroom, she kept to the shadows and it was only ten minutes later that she arrived at the library, and it, it was thankfully, mercifully empty, the few people in there so engrossed in their research that they didn’t bother to look up. It was always like this in Sci-Ops, everyone preferring to work in their offices, only using the library when they had to. She slid into the seat for the computer in the furthest corner, and after a few attempts, she finally managed to get a Fitz’s log in to work (and though JaSimmons1 wasn’t the most secure password he could have used, he did find it very sweet that it was her name that he used), glad that worked as it gave her more security clearance than a guest log in would.

Searching through the databases it didn’t take her long to search her name. There were dozens of results related to her work, and after some time she managed to find information related to the Monolith, and pausing for only the briefest of seconds, she clicked on the file, window and window of information quickly popping up. It was almost overwhelming,

_Name: Jemma Anne Simmons_

_Age: 25 – at time of disappearance_

_Level: 6_

_Status: MIA (presumed dead)_

_Date of Disappearance: 22 nd July 2014_

Seeing that basic information, she swallowed hard, trying to ignore the fact the date on the computer showed she had been gone nearly five years and after the five it would change from _MIA_ to _Deceased._ Instead, she switched windows, reading the transcripts of what had happened, tests of what was done on the Monolith, and the words _Test Failed_ again and again and again.

Everything that had been done here had failed, and she couldn’t help but wonder… had this version of Jemma not survived on Maveth… had she died early on, with Fitz being unsuccessful at working out what had happened and how to open the Monolith. Had he not had Daisy to help keep the portal open long enough to be able to get through to her? Had he even considered that idea?

So many things were racing through her mind, and she couldn’t help but delve deeper into all the information, reading everything that had happened. Everything that was still happening. There was just so much of it.

“Jemma?” a voice asked, breaking the silence that had settled in the room, one that Jemma had ignored because she was so engrossed in what she was reading, the files about her disappearance in this Universe. But upon hearing it, she turned to see the source and saw that it was Fitz, standing there. Frozen.

“You’re back,” he whispered, stepping towards her. He was in shock, as if she had seen a ghost, and she guessed she was one. She had been gone from his life for over five years, and now, here she was, sitting on a computer chair, staring at him. It took her only moments to stand up, unable to believe he was there, obviously alive but she never made it to him, the distance because her head started to spin, her breath catching in her throat. Her heard constricted and the room spun.

“Jemma! Jemma! Jemma!”

She didn’t fully recognise him, running across the room and taking her in his arms, holding her up.

Culture shock.

Her body unable to cope with the adjustment after so long away from this planet.

It had to be that.

Or maybe she had died on Maveth and the Universe had granted her just enough time to return to Fitz, maybe not her Fitz, but another one, one that was alive and well so she could tell him that she loved him one last time.

She felt herself being lowered to the ground, her body resting in his arms as her heart continued to stutter in his chest, as oxygen failed to sustain her.

“Love…” she managed to stutter out, feeling her heart break in her chest, and not just because of the sudden adjustment her body had been through, not caring that this wasn’t her Fitz, because she knew she was dying here (again, but that had to be it, had to be how they were travelling through Universes. They had both died twice and ended up in different Universes and now she was dying again, about to lose him because he wasn’t going to die. Not here) and she had to tell him that she loved him, her last words had to be heard by a Fitz, that she loved him.

Then the world faded away.

***

She woke in a bed, the sheet a soft silk. A stark contrast to her bed in the Lighthouse. It was so much… it was different. And the sheets, they were… they felt nice, smooth against her skin, but they weren’t comfortable, they weren’t what she was used to. Sitting up in the bed, she felt the sheets slide down, and she tried to take in her surroundings.

She was expecting the medical bay at Sci-Ops, a place for her to recover from her stint on Maveth. Or maybe she was in Fitz’s apartment. Or maybe his house. He did seem like he had his life together here, from the files he had been holding when he came in. From the information she had read whilst researching herself and what had happened, he had become an expert in interspace travel and quantum physics in the search to find her. One of the best in the world, so if he had a better place than the one they had shared when they had been working for Sci-Ops, in the years before they joined, this would be it.

(He was a genius after all, and S.H.I.E.L.D had some of the best medics, so why wouldn’t they have been able to save her? To bring her back and let them work out how they could escape? She hadn’t died. That hadn’t been how they were travelling between worlds. There was another reason, and together they could work it out.)

 Taking in her surroundings, she saw she was in a massive penthouse, the room vast with a marbled floor and pillars holding up a high ceiling. Sliding out of the bed, a chill sent goose bumps up her arms, and down her legs, and it was only then that she realised that she was wearing very little; a tank top and a pair of pyjama shorts. Something that she hadn’t worn in years, not since that heatwave that occurred when they had been at the Academy.

Making her way around the room, she stopping in front of a table, the chair for it thrown back haphazardly. A vase of white lilies sat in the centre, already wilting. Notebooks and pens, pages and pencils were scattered all over the table, a few on the floor. It was her handwriting, again and again and again, words spilling out everywhere on the pages. She was about to reach for one, to see what it was about when she saw it. The photo… she reached forward, picking it up, taking it in.

This wasn’t the world she had just finished, this was somewhere else. 

Somewhere bad.

Somewhere dangerous.

“Jemma. You’re up.” She spun at the voice, the frame falling from her hands and shattering at her feet. Locating its source took mere seconds and standing there, in what could only be described as a hallway, a step above her and several feet away from her, was a figure.

And it wasn't Fitz.


	4. Chapter 4

It was the Doctor standing there, looking at her, his head tilted to one side. “What are you doing up Jemma, you should be sleeping. You still haven’t recovered from the other night.”

The look on his face wasn’t one of anger, not like it had been in the Framework. No here, in this universe, it was a look of love, of concern. As if he were worried about her. As if they were… no… as if they were together.

And that didn’t… it didn’t make sense.

The Doctor, he couldn’t be with here but in this universe, they were somehow involved.

And in this universe, he _loved_ her.

“What?” was all she managed to stutter as her mind raced at a million and one miles per hour as she tried to process what was happening here.

He stepped down, and closed the distance that was between them, shrugging off his blazer, and throwing it on a leather sofa. He started to untie the tie, dropping it at his feet. “I thought that you were still asleep. After last night.”

She frowned at him, confused. She did feel tired. Not that that was unusual. She had been so very tired ever since she had lost him all those months ago now. In her quest to find him, she had sacrificed sleep. It wasn’t important, not anymore. Not when her nights were filled with nightmares of his death, of losing him again and again and again.

It just wasn’t worth sleeping anymore, the pain too much. And the nightmares that haunted her… well they couldn’t haunt her if she was awake.

“I couldn’t… I couldn’t sleep”, she replied, her voice softer than she had hoped that it would be. There was something about being here, this universe, that terrified her. The Doctor, it wasn’t her Fitz. He was a cold, heartless man, one who wanted to hurt people.

One who hurt and killed Inhumans just because they were different.

One who had _shot_ her.

And though it had been so long ago now, the memories of the Framework were still something that lingered in her mind. Something that she didn’t want to repeat. But here she was, and she had to work out how to escape before things… before… she shook her head, stepping back, and knocking into the table, the vase falling, a few sheets of paper raining down.

He frowned, watching as she wrapped her arms around herself. She was suddenly self-conscious, not wanting as much of her body to be on display, not with his eyes looking her up and down. He could hurt her right now, kill her if he wanted because the last time he had been like this… no that was something that she didn’t even want to think about at this point in time. “Jemma, what’s… what’s wrong?”

He must have noticed that something was different because he reached out, taking one of her hands in both of his, and though it was a sensation that she knew so well, the movement made her flinch because when he touched her, his hands wrapping around hers, warm but soft, something so very un-Fitz like, a million and one thoughts flashed through her mind, images, visions, thoughts. Things that she couldn’t comprehend.

“What,” she whispered, her voice low, and, stumbling back, her hand came loose from his and all at once, the visions stopped, but that didn’t stop him. There was a look of concern on his face, something she thought she knew well but something that was so alien right now. “No…”

He was taking a step closer to her, closing the distance that she had created between them, reaching up and… she jerked back again, his finger only needing to graze under her chin before it all came flashing back.

“Don’t…” she whispered; her voice harsher than she meant it to be. “Don’t.” She continued to stumble back, falling over a chair that was behind her, landing in a pile on the floor. Her head was pounding. It felt as though there was a drum beating in there, threatening to tear her apart from the inside.  “Please don’t.”

He had continued to advance until she uttered the two words, her voice breaking and he just… he just stopped, something that was so confusing, given what she knew about what he was like as this, as the Doctor. “You’re still adjusting.” He crouched down as he said the words, so that he was level with her, rather than looking down at her. Something he thought she would have loved, but it seemed, that without Aida’s influence he was different, he was more caring. Taking her hand in his own, his thumb rubbing the back of her hand, he sighed. “You need to relax Jemma. Please, I know that it’s hard for you, but you need to rest.”

She shook her head and shook him off. “I’m fine,” she muttered, trying to reassure herself and him. “I’m fine.”

But as soon as she stood up, the edges of her vision started to eat away at her, and before she knew it, the cold marble of the floor was rising to meet her.

***

The second time she awoke that day, she was back in the bed, wrapped once again buried under the silk sheets but this time there was something else. Also on top of her was a blanket, a thick heavy material that wasn’t like anything else she had used before. It was somewhat scratchy, not that comfortable. Not like the soft one Fitz’s mum had made for her that time she had contracted the flu whilst staying at their house.

It was so disorientating, wondering where she was, when she was. The room she was in, she couldn’t place it, no matter how hard she tried, she couldn’t place it. Her brain still felt like it was on fire, a blazing inferno racing through her mind. The blanket on top of her didn’t help, it felt like it was smothering her, and if she could get it away from her, push it off her, then it would be better.

 Struggling underneath the weight of it, she managed to push it off, the thing sliding to the ground with a dull thud, and after blinking several times, she was able to take in her surroundings, the room she was in. Where, and when she was. The room, it was the Doctor’s penthouse.

“What…” she asked, looking at him, sitting in the chair beside the bed, skimming through a file. “What was that? Where am I?”

“You’re not my Jemma, that much I know. You’re another Jemma, trapped in her body. That much I gained when I touched you. Jemma, _my_ Jemma, she’s Inhuman. One of the most powerful…”

“Inhuman?” she whispered, and he nodded, reaching out as though to caress her, but stopping himself at the last moment, as though he remembered her issues with touch, since, unlike his Jemma, she didn’t have control over her powers. “What?”

“You can… my Jemma, she can see read minds. See what everyone’s thinking …”

“Is that why you have her? Keep her hidden away here for your own purposes?” There was a hint of anger to her tone, and she forced herself into a sitting position, ignoring the relentless waves of dizziness that kept washing over her. “To use her in whatever plan that you have?”

“No. No… it’s not just… she can’t just read minds; she can make others read her mind. She can see the future. Well, she could if she could control her powers… what she has… she’s dangerous. You think what I’m doing is wrong? Jemma sees and hears everything, being outside, it hurts her, she can’t cope with it. And with how the world is, you think they wouldn’t hurt her? I keep her here because it’s safe. It’s what she wants. She knows that she’s at risk out there, that in here is safer. This is what she wants.”

She didn’t reply to this, because she didn’t know how to. But eventually she spoke. “So, you know why I’m here? What I’m doing? Who I am?”

“You’re… you’re here to rescue him. Free him and take him back to your world. And you need me to help. Because he’s trapped in me. Your souls are intertwined and as long as he keeps hoping dimensions, you’ll always follow him. Doomed to do this forever. But you want to try and get him home, return him to your reality.”

“I do.” She whispered, her gaze dropping to her hand, wondering just how powerful this Jemma was, and given that she had very little control over her powers, she dread to think just how much untapped power she could have. Suddenly, the pages and pages of her handwriting made sense. It must have been visions, what she saw, being written down in a desperately so it would not be forgotten. “I know that it’s a big ask, and you must think me crazy asking it…”

“I don’t.”

His words took her by surprise, it was the last thing that she was expecting. What she had been expecting was him to turn her in, to have her taken away, tortured for information about who she was, and where she was from. “When you touched me, before you passed out, I saw everything that you had suffered, but also the love that you have for him. All that you two have been through. And that’s… I wish my Jemma could experience that love..." He paused, his words catching in his throat, and after clearing it, as if regretting showing that emotion, he continued. "If one version of us can experience it, out of the dozens that seemingly exist, then we should give them the chance too.”

“But how are we going to leave here because if you’ve seen what I’ve been through then you know that we have to die to escape her and I can’t… I can’t put you through that and I don’t…”

“I might have a way,” he interrupted, his face going from concerned to concentrating, as if were trying to think of something. “We might have to work on it, alter it to work for us, but between the two of us I think that we can do it.

“What is it?”

“Operation Looking Glass.”

***

Days were spent working on the new and upgraded version of Operation Looking Glass, the one that would take them home, back to their reality, and even though he wasn’t her Fitz, there was something familiar about working with him. It was natural, the two of them working like clockwork, the flow easy.

“What was she like?” she asked one morning, not looking up from the calculations flitting across the screen in front of her. “Before she turned Inhuman. You’ve told me all about her now, but you haven’t told me what she was like before.”

The Doctor didn’t speak for a moment. “We had been together. Then we had broken up. She wasn’t… her and my father never got on, but I suppose you know all about him, having gone so far as to shoot him in the Framework.” He smirked at her as she gave him a glare. “But they always clashed, there were just arguments all the time. So we broke it off. But that didn’t stop me loving her. But people knew about our connection. An underground Inhuman resistance group knew that hurting her would get to me. So they released a Terrigen bomb in her apartment block to try and kill her, but it changed her. It took me two days to find her in the wreckage.”

Jemma had no words to this. She hadn’t expected anything he said to be as horrific as this but… She had no words, just shaking her head.

“She survived. She may have changed but that didn’t stop me from loving her. And it didn't stop her from loving me. If anything, it brought us closer together. We tried to return things back to normal, but the attack changed her. It wasn’t safe for her to go back to her job.”

“What did she do?” Jemma had abandoned her work at his point, fascinated by what he was saying, curious as to what her other self had done. “Before.”

A smile crossed his face as he thought back, obviously thinking about happier times. “She was a neurosurgeon. One of the best in the world. Everyone wanted to see her. She was… she was wonderful but after the attack, when even the slightest bit of human contact could trigger her, it wasn’t a job that she could keep up. And being Inhuman, I can’t tell you how many documents that I’ve faked to keep her alive.” He sighed, rubbing at his face, in a gesture that was so familiar to her. “I want to get her out of here. Away to somewhere where no one knows her name. Where no one knows my name. I want to take her to…”

“Perthshire,” she cut in, already knowing what he was going to say.

“How did you? I never…”

“That’s where me and my Fitz want to go. To run away too.” She beamed at him. “We might have lived different lives, but it seems that some things are inevitable.”

“Maybe,” he replied, dropping his gaze, no longer looking at her. She couldn’t help but wonder how hard this was for him, having someone who looked exactly like the woman that he loved but wasn’t. Because she knew that it was hard to have someone that you loved being there with you, but it not actually being them.

“We’ll do this,” she whispered. “I’ll get back my Fitz, and you’ll get your Jemma back, and we’ll both get our happy endings.”

He nodded, seemingly unsure.

***

It was another two weeks before it was finished, The Doctor having finished it early morning when she was sleeping off another vision she had had (something she had frequently as she struggled to grasp the powers the Jemma in this universe had). But when he had finished it, and ran the tests to confirm that it would work, she was more than thankful, and they decided to waste no more time.

Lying down on the bed beside him, she slid the head rest on herself, as he did the same, the two of them careful not to even brush their hands (or any other parts of their bodies) against each other, for every time it happened, she got a glimpse into his what his mind, his world was like, and the few times the contact lasted more than a moment, it always left her feeling faint, and nausea, and she even passed out twice.

“Are you ready?” he asked, not even asking if this would work because they both _just knew_ that it was going to work.

"I am," she whispered, as he typed in the necessary instructions on the tablet.

Taking a deep breath, she closed her eyes, ready to reunite with her Fitz as the world went black.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Maybe one day I'll stop leaving a month between uploads. Thank you for all the support on this, I hope you enjoyed this chapter!

**Author's Note:**

> Title and song lyrics from begin again by purity ring. At the moment, there are only 5 chapter predicted, but could increase to 6 if necessary. Thanks so much for checking out, I hope you enjoyed this first part.


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